About Lianca Van der Merwe

Lianca traverses the globe as a digital nomad but inevitably always end up somewhere in Asia. This is weird because, even though they have the best cuisine, the clothes don't fit her tall frame (pretty frustrating for a shopaholic). Her favourite ChinesePod lessons is 'How to Really Exaggerate Your Chinese' AKA 'Wolverine is soooo hot'.

Posts by Lianca Van der Merwe:

In November, ChinesePod celebrated two very different holidays: Singles Day on November 11 in China and Thanksgiving on November 24, a family day in the United States. Even though these holidays have opposite meanings, on both holidays, huge sales and discounts are up for grabs.
During November we will explored the duality of culture and saw where things differ or overlap. We came up with a specially curated list of ‘opposite’ words in Chinese that when combined create new meaning.

ChinesePod content is often featured in this amazing newsletter, curated for Chinese learners.

There are *lots* of online resources for people learning Chinese, including lots of blogs, videos, and tips. It’s hard to keep track of these all, and even harder to know where to turn to improve your Chinese.).

Mid-Autumn Festival 2016 is happening today, Sept 15. It is the 15th day of the 8th month in the lunar calendar. This festival , celebrating the harvest, is one of China’s 3 most important festivals along with ‘Dragon Boat’ festival and ‘Chinese New Years’. Regardless of whether you have a penchant for Chinese culture or not, the festival should be familiar to you, or at least you should have come in contact with the popular food item ‘Mooncakes’ (Not? Have you been living off the grid all these years?).

ChinesePod is celebrating along with the rest of the Mandarin speaking world, and we have some festive content waiting for you! Here is our content selection for Mid-Autumn Festival 2016.

This is a guest post from friend of the site, Peter Askelof of Du Chinese. Visit their site to learn all about their fantastic new Chinese Language App.

Is it possible to practice Mandarin by yourself, without taking classes or living in China? It could very well be, at least if you are to believe the advocates of input ­based language learning. Input ­based language learning consists of listening and reading, with study activities such as watching TV, reading books, listening to podcasts and studying texts. Many experienced language learners swear by an input focused learning style where the bulk of your time is spent on listening and reading material.

Through input ­based activities you are fed a stream of correct language which helps you develop a natural intuition for the language’s grammar and a large passive vocabulary. A possible drawback to focusing mainly on input is that it might take a bit longer before you feel comfortable speaking yourself, but if you keep practicing input­ based activities you will soon reap the rewards of a rich vocabulary and a much better intuition for the language. To make the learning the most effective, the language you input should be just slightly above your comprehension level, so that you can understand most of the material but it still contains some new words and grammar. You should get as much input as possible, so it helps if you also find the material interesting. So where can you find fun, interesting listening and reading material suited for your skill level? Here we recommend two apps that aim to provide you with entertaining content suited to your language level: ChinesePod for listening, and Du Chinese for reading.

What is ChinesePod?

ChinesePod is the longest-running Mandarin Learning tool. With over 4,000 audio and video lessons at six different skill levels there is something to study for everyone. Read our blog for useful tips & tricks, as well as cultural insights that’ll enrich your understanding of the Mandarin language.